If I Live to Be a Hundred
by Chash
Summary: Victor can't help but understand. It's a family thing. Spoilers for Runaways v.2 22


Title: If I Live to Be A HundredAuthor: Chash  
Pairing: Victor/Chase  
Rating: PG  
Spoilers: Runaways 2, #22  
Summary: Victor can't help but understand. It's a family thing.

"If I live to be a hundred, I will never understand what you see in him"  
-Victor to Gert, _East Coast/West Coast_

Victor likes to tell himself Gert would approve. He breaks down the sentence clinically when he can't avoid thinking like a machine: he _likes_ to tell himself, meaning he doesn't believe it. He doesn't even think it. It's delusion, and he knows it. Gert _would_ approve: a fanciful supposition. Putting words in her mouth. Every part of the sentence is unproven, unsubstantiated, and unknowable. It's not a lie, really. It's just not a fact.

He does sometimes think she would approve; just not as often as he tells himself she would. From what he knows (replace with: knew) of Gertrude Yorkes, he can list reasons she would think it was a good thing he was shacking up with (replace with: sleeping with, in a relationship with, fucking, together with, 404 error: love) her boyfriend. And Chase still is Gert's boyfriend, Victor knows that. He doesn't even like to tell himself otherwise. He can't pretend about that. He doesn't get a title in the world of Chase's love life. There is Gert, who is the once-and-future girlfriend, and no one else of consequence.

But Gert might be okay with (do not replace with: like) some of it. Chase dealing with his gay issues, that was okay. Even if it wasn't always strictly dealing. Victor not being with Nico: another good point. She wouldn't have approved of any part of his relationship with Nico except for the end of it, he's pretty sure. Chase not being with Nico, for that matter. Nico not kissing boys for the hell of it. Everyone trying, at least a little, to be happy.

Chase doesn't try to move on. Victor is sure Gert would approve if he did. Victor is just as sure it's never going to happen. Those are facts. Chase is a stubborn bastard.

Victor thinks (do not replace with: knows) it's one of his better qualities.

Victor was the one who talked Chase out of killing Nico. He was almost as shocked about that as everyone else was. Chase trying to kill Nico, that wasn't huge surprise for Victor. It was twisted and terrible and weird, but it was ilogical/i in a way that Victor thinks he understands because he's the son of Ultron, and he was programed to get that kind of logic. Chase and Victor get trading eyes for eyes.

But Victor talked him down. Even now it doesn't quite compute and Victor doesn't quite remember what he said. He talked about Gert, that he knows. He talked about things Gert wouldn't want. He talked about having a choice. He made good points, he said reasonable things. That wasn't the surprise. The surprise was Chase stopping, listening, and breaking down.

When Victor looked back on it in the mindset he sometimes gets (replace with: can't avoid), the logical mechanical one, he understands. It had to be him because Chase wasn't close to Nico like he was close to Gert and Molly, and he and Gert and Molly were this little family. But Molly was the kid, and that meant Molly wasn't an equal.

He can't explain how exactly it makes sense that it couldn't have been Xavin or Karolina or even Nico. He just knows that it couldn't have been. It's something in the way Chase had said "please" to him in the hideout when he and Gert had broken up, before she had died. Victor knew they'd bonded then, but the machine parts of him don't really understand bonding. They understand probabilities, what people will and will not do, and he doesn't understand how they calculate that. Victor thinks he can't be expected to communicate well with others when he can't even really communicate with himself.

He understands the things Chase has done he can't forget, the times Chase has showed he's human: talking about his parents in Victor's bedroom, saying "please," trying to kill Nico, crying on Victor after. Chase calculates human weakness, hides it, presents it, uses it, controls it. Some part of Victor even finds it admirable. Some part of him wishes he could do it. Some part of him wishes he wasn't weak to it.

He'd never planned to hook up with Chase. He'd never planned to even be bisexual. He'd figured there was some repressed homosexuality in Chase just because Chase never stopped calling stuff gay and stared longer than was strictly necessary when he accidentally walked in on Victor naked. But those two things together, Victor knew, did not automatically translate to the two of them together.

Chase had been drunk, which just made it worse. Cliches on top of cliches on top of stupidity. Chase had been drunk and feeling sorry for himself and Victor hadn't said no.

No matter how many times he thinks about Victor can't (replace with: won't) figure out why he went along with it. He could list the things he wasn't gaining: a boyfriend, a healthy relationship, a better life, happiness, wealth, understanding, redemption, rebirth. But when Chase slurred "Vic," and leaned, all alcohol breath and control somewhere behind his eyes, Victor had closed his eyes and kissed back.

It's not a bad life, him and Chase and Molly, with Nico and Karolina and Xavin visiting sometimes. He thinks Gert saw (replace with: must have seen) the cracks among them, where loyalties fell, and he's interested to realize he was probably the unknown there. Chase would go with Molly (and Gert, if she'd been there, but she wasn't, so what was the point in thinking about it), and Nico and Xavin would go with Karolina. The new Pride saw that too, saw what links needed to be cracked.

Victor thinks it's Chase's who's underestimated in these things, Chase who's such a perfect jock it's impossible to think he might be a caring human being under there. Victor had doubted the depth of his feeling for Gert and Molly, even, but he can't now, not after seeing him try to kill for Gert and fight tooth and nail for custody of Molly. Chase is a painstakingly crafted walking cliche who knows feelings and human emotions aren't going to help him any.

And as much as Victor knows (replace with: thinks he knows) that, he knows too he can never be someone like that for Chase. Chase and Gert were strong and healthy and deeply in love and no one really noticed it. But once Gert was dead, Chase had no excuse to hate Victor anymore because he couldn't have killed her, and like clockwork he turned to Victor to fill in pieces and places. Victor has to clinically examine reasonings like this; he can't help it. During his fling with Nico, even while he was happy and wanted to believe her that she just wanted him, he couldn't ignore that she was out of options, that Karolina was taken, Molly young, Gert dead, Chase heartbroken. He knows Chase could've gone through that same operation.

Victor knows Nico was with him because he had no other options as strongly as he knows that Nico didn't think of it like that. But Chase could think (replace with: thinks) like that. Chase understands being shit out of options.

Chase is comforting. Chase is practical like Victor is. Like supervillains are.

They're not good people, Victor knows. They're survivors. And he can be content with that.

Gert would approve.


End file.
